Court Orders Meta to Name Executives Who Authorized Book Piracy for AI Training

Judge Orders Meta to Name Executives Behind Torrenting Decisions

Magistrate Judge Thomas Hixon has ordered Meta to identify the executives and managers who authorized the company's downloads of pirated books from shadow libraries such as Anna's Archive and LibGen. The discovery order covers a class action brought by authors including Richard Kadrey and Sarah Silverman, as well as a separate lawsuit from publisher Entrepreneur Media.

Meta had spent weeks blaming staff who downloaded the torrents, but the order could expose a wider range of supervisors, managers, and executives whom employees say approved the piracy. The company must now clearly identify key decision-makers rather than limit its response to the employees who performed the downloads.

Court Rejects Meta's "Informal Approach" Defense

In court filings, Meta claimed its early AI dataset efforts were managed through an "informal approach" in which no one with authority made decisions, insisting any decision was made only in the sense that staffers technically downloaded torrents. Judge Hixon disagreed, saying the authors' request was not limited to formal decisions and that it asked about all decision-makers, not a single one.

Internal messages cited in the lawsuits showed staff discomfort with the directives. One worker wrote that "torrenting from a corporate laptop doesn't feel right," while another testified that downloads required director or VP level approval. Unredacted messages unsealed early last year allegedly showed the decision to download from LibGen followed a prior escalation to MZ, referring to Mark Zuckerberg. According to the lawsuits, Meta torrented shadow libraries repeatedly from 2022 to 2024, downloading 80.6 terabytes from LibGen and 35.7 terabytes through Anna's Archive.

Server Logs May Reveal Seeding Evidence

The order also compels Meta to produce command history files for every server used to torrent, including virtual machines and AWS instances. Authors argue these logs could prove Meta seeded copyrighted works, which is central to their contributory infringement claim, and could reveal more about the company's alleged seeding mitigation methods. Meta has claimed it relied on mitigations to prevent seeding.

The court also required Meta to answer questions about what happened to pirated works that were not used for AI training. Meta and Entrepreneur Media's lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Sources: Ars Technica